“Forced migration” is defined for the purposes of this study as the transportation of a considerable number of a population group (whether nomadic or sedentary), normally in family units and accompanied by livestock and chattels, to be permanently resettled in a region remote from their home; and undertaken as an act of policy by the ruler or his agents. It does not refer to attempts to sedentarize nomads on lands adjacent to their pastures, or to simple dispossession of lands without alternative provision.

Examples of forced migration have been noted in Iran and its imperial appendages from the earliest to the most recent times, chiefly as punishment of stubborn opponents or refractory subjects by a vigorous, centralizing monarch.

In developing as in advanced economies, the pace of urbanization has continued to accelerate with the result that many less developed countries are experiencing problems in their urbanized areas which are quite similar to the advanced economies. In Iran, increased oil revenues which have aided in overall economic expansion have created differential growth rates in industries with different impacts on urban, as against rural growth, bringing along specific urban problems which require special consideration.

In Tehran, as in the major growth centers of other developing countries, population was growing at an annual rate of 6.6 percent in the period 1966-1969. Since 1969, the natural rate of growth has somewhat decreased but still remains at the high plateau of 6.1 percent per annum. As a consequence of this rapid rise in the population, the number of inhabitants of Tehran reached a level of 3.9 million in 1972, according to Iranian Plan and Budget Organization estimates.

Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi, also known by his pen name Gowhar Morad, is one of the two or three most prominent writers of prose fiction in Iran today. His first published work appeared in 1956, and since then he has published some twenty volumes of short stories and plays, and several monographic studies of rural Iranian communities. Initially trained as a physician, Dr. Sa'edi has for some years now devoted himself almost wholly to writing. Most recently he edited four volumes of a new literary journal, Alifba, for the publishing house of Amir Kabir.

The present story is the first in a collection of three, entitled Gūr va Gahvārah (“Cradle and Grave“), that was first distributed some seven years ago and later confiscated.

When we got off the bus, the old man said, “Here we are.” There was a big rectangular square, and at each corner a long street like a hallway that stretched off into the darkness. The old man leading the way, we walked down the street across from us until we reached an open space and a long concrete bridge.

When anger becomes the dominant mode of expression in a narrative context—and this to such a heightened degree that its release determines a whole series of actions—then it becomes necessary to evaluate not only its effect but also its purpose. In epic literatures dealing with heroic warfare, when a hero gets mad, a whole community suffers: castastrophes occur on a broad scale. These catastrophes, Gertrude Levy points out in her Sword From the Rock, “are always brought about by excess of pride arising from [the hero's] special gift of mana, or manas or menos”: which she defines as “the heroic energy which is a sign of [the hero's] divine ancestry and upon which [his] leadership depends; now brought into conflict with the accepted loyalties of organized warfare.”

The hero, in conflict with his society, then, comes to express not just an inner resentment, but a quality of divine origin, which enables history to work itself out.

The Iranian constitutional movement of the early twentieth century involved various segments of Iranian society. Intellectuals, enlightened members of the bureaucracy, religious leaders, merchants and the urban population, each to a greater or lesser extent participated in this reform movement. Naturally their political attitudes, objectives, and interests differed. The intellectuals, who were secular in outlook and influenced by liberal Western ideas, hoped for the establishment of a constitutional form of government. A small group of reformers in the government sympathized with these men and were in close contact with them. Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish between the former and the latter since most of the intelligentsia were also a part of the ruling class. Perhaps one of the best examples is Mīrzā Malkam Khān Nāẓim al-Dawlah (1834-1908), who represents the attitude of a liberal thinker as well as a reformist member of the bureaucracy.

Scholars of society and politics have over the years developed a large number of theoretical approaches to assist them in understanding their subject matter. These methodological orientations necessarily affect research findings and results. Social scientists have not always been known for their toleration of any approach that differs substantially from their own. Some, therefore, harden their own approaches into doctrines while those developed by others are treated as heresies. Dogmatism triumphs over open-mindedness.

Practitioners of the elite approach are as prone to this malady as are any other group of theoreticians. And for some very understandable reasons. In American political science, those who adopt an elite perspective have been unfairly but consistently attacked by the “pluralists,” i.e., those who adopt a group approach and in so doing disavow the existence and/or importance of elites. The attack takes on a nasty normative slant whereby elite scholars are insidiously identified as proponents of the phenomenon they study.

Assuming that every student of the Middle East ought to be at least passingly concerned with the attitudes of Middle Easterners towards him, the group he represents, and the results of their collective academic endeavors, the recent efflorescence of interest in Western “Orientalism” on the part of Iranian scholars and writers deserves the attention of all serious students of Middle Eastern culture and society. Insofar as this interest may be construed as an attempt to set the historical record straight by providing an eastern corrective to West-centered interpretations of Middle Eastern history, it may also be considered a natural and logical consequence of the changing nature of international political and social conditions, particularly as these have obtained since World War II. In this sense it can only be welcomed and applauded in the community of scholars at large.

The relationship between economic factors and political development has received considerable attention from scholars, historians, and social scientists. The classical formulation of economic factors and political violence is to be found in the much-discussed and opposing views of Alexis deTocqueville and Karl Marx. These two views explain revolutions either through economic development or economic destitute. According to deTocqueville's analysis of the French Revolution, steady prosperity and general economic improvement were responsible for the onset of the revolution. The Marxist interpretation of revolution in capitalist societies sees it as the culmination of class warfare between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—a process in which the proletariat and the masses find themselves increasingly impoverished and degraded.

Numerous other studies of revolutions have elaborated or modified either the Marxist or the Tocquevillian hypotheses. Crane Brinton's investigation of revolutions indicates that revolutions tend to take place in societies undergoing economic growth.

The most familiar of Hafez's poems in the English-speaking world is the so-called “Turk of Shiraz” ghazal, a much translated and frequently discussed poem that has been called a number of things which it isn't: A great poem, a grand philosophical utterance, a unified composition and a typical Hafezian ghazal. And it hasn't been called something which it may well be: a verse-song intended for recital with musical accompaniment.